Winter Retreat and Grading

A big thankyou to everyone who was able to make it to the winter retreat, it was a fabulous time of enjoying some amazing food (thankyou Alex), amazing location (thankyou Brendon and Kristie), informal practice together (some of whom will carry the scars for a while) and also an opportunity to workshop some aiki using biomechanics. For me personally it was great to enjoy time with family, enjoy restaurant style meals and gain some glimmers of break throughs that tie in well with Ki testing and subtle kuzushi (balance breaking). Along the way was some 'internal strength' style hints towards effortless power and to prevent locks like nikkyo from being applied but without resisting...time will tell.

Photos are slowly coming up on facebook, seep http://www.facebook.com/aikidorepublic to add yours (there are too many family snaps just now) or comment. look out for a more detailed account of the weekend.

The month of July (28th) marks the one year anniversary of the dojos opening and its nice to have everyone from the first class still about... big thankyou to Alison, Eric, Craig, Simon, Kevin for kicking it off back then and to everyone else who has joined and supported us since then.

Alison and I plan to hold a modest Kyu grading on Thursday July 28th to mark the occasion with a dan grading later in the year following Maruyama Sensei's visit